Azeri lawmaker responds to Sargsyan’s ‘schizophrenic’ statement

Speaking in Yerevan at a joint press conference with European Council President Donald Tusk, Sargsyan accused some European officials of taking Azerbaijan’s side in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in return for "gas and caviar”.

Sargsyan said that though the recent European Games hosted by Baku ushered a brief period of peace and stability between Armenian forces and Azerbaijan, it was a "delusion”.

"I am saying that it [the European Games] was a gift because it allowed the international community to see who creates tension, who can stop violating the ceasefire,” he said. "This is really important. I turn to European institutions to refuse putting an equality sign on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. When there is an equality sign and when people have a feeling of impunity, people get detached from the earth.”

Sargsyan also said: "I am sure that in spite of the attractiveness of the smell of gas and the taste of caviar to many people in European institutions, we will come to the right path.”

Rasim Musabayov, a member of Azerbaijan’s parliament, said the Armenian leader was probably drunk when he made this statement.

"Otherwise, it is difficult to explain the insolence of the leader of a country that constantly begs Brussels for grants and other financial assistance,” Musabayov wrote on his Facebook page.

"The Armenian president wants Brussels to point to Baku as the side violating the ceasefire. This is not the first schizophrenic statement by Sargsyan. At a meeting with President Ilham Aliyev in Sochi last year, Sargsyan surprised the audience by saying that it was Baku that did not comply with UN Security Council resolutions,” Musabayov said.

The UN Security Council passed four resolutions in 1993, calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Armenian forces from Azerbaijan’s occupied territory.

"By calling on Europe to stop putting an equality sign between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Sargsyan may have sought to precede a similar demand that will probably be made during Tusk’s visit to Baku. However, the fundamental difference between the Armenian and Azerbaijani demands is that the latter cites international law while Yerevan speculates on the feelings of Christian solidarity,” Musabayov said.

Musabayov said that against a backdrop of the EU’s rejection of aggressive separatism and illegal occupation by Russia of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, as well as Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Moldova’s Transdnestr region, putting an equality sign between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the occupying country and the victim of aggression, respectively, would be a clear demonstration of double standards.